


Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by Senket



Series: The Winning Scenario [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Tarsus IV, death!bones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6955729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death has followed Jim all his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

A child is born in a roaring chaos. His sensitive ears are blasted with the screams and tears of his mother, the calculated communications between his doctor and nurse, the screech of crashing metals distorted by the scrambling feed they’re coming from. His father’s voice is clear, even with the shards of static that slice his words in pieces, love and fear, courage and agony, complete adoration filling him to the brim. It names him James Tiberius Kirk. His own wails are sharp and hurt in answer, confused and messy. And then: an explosion of sound followed immediately by a silence, so oppressive and sudden that it feels physical. His mother is caught in a yawning shock, the medical staff silenced by regret. And underneath, the low throb of shuttle engines cradles him through it, wraps him in the comfort of steadiness.

————————

Jimmy Jimbo James, as his eight-year-old brother likes to call him, runs through the Iowa fields like a little wild thing whenever he gets the chance, which is often. Their Uncle Frank is usually busy working at the shipyard this time of day, and mom’s so far away she might as well be in another galaxy. (She might be.) Lately he’s been running to the big tree that plunges its roots into a stagnant pool nearby, fed only during the rains. It’s been dry a while, and Jimmy’s just small enough to crawl into a space under the ancient tree’s twining roots. He likes sitting there and trying to read Sam’s books, which come back stained and twisted, but Sam never notices. He knows most of the words but not enough, and so he lies on his back in the mud trying to eke them out. But today when he gets there, a little fawn has already hidden itself underneath, making high-pitched sounds through its nose. It stares at him with big watery eyes, tries to scramble away when he comes closer, but it’s too delirious, too weak, to move anywhere. It smells funny, not like the horses he’s seen, but like sickness and moisture, strong enough to make him gag.

He runs to get Sam, and Sam calls the wildlife center, and by the time they all get back the fawn is limp. They drag the carcass out from under the branches and in the dappled light Jimbo sees there’s a tear across its flank, gleaming with sweat, turned yellow-green at the edges of the flesh and all black inside like he’s never seen. 

They agree to bury the animal because Jimbo is clearly going to freak out otherwise, and they let him throw fistfuls of brown earth on it, and say nothing when the four-year-old fills his hands with leaves from the tree and splats them on the fresh ground. Someone pours out a shot of bourbon on the unmarked mound. A warm, dry hand settles on his shoulder for half a second and his little form unknots under the kind weight.

———————–

Jim knows something is wrong before the townspeople but after the farming officials. The crops are dying in droves, milky-white fizz growing at the base of their stalks as they turn dry and brown and crack in the sun. It isn’t the plants that kill anybody.

They hold the screen door shut as they shoot his uncle, his aunt, his freckled cousin. He vomits on his shoes and they leave him in the puddle, eager to cover as much ground before people start realizing what’s happening. The family is left there to become mulch for future crops, to refertilize the soil.

He runs and hides for so long that he forgets his name, forgets that names exists, forgets how to speak, forgets that speaking is a thing that exists. He becomes an animal, eating dirt and twigs and leaves, crawling under leaning shacks because the foundation is a better hiding place than the shaking houses, because the creatures on two legs always check inside them but never under them. He learns to fear fire but learns to move towards the smell of decay: those other people never go there.

Except the man with brown hair and stained hands, always silent. He only sees him when the clouds shift over the moon but he always knows he’s there. He wakes up sometimes with a dry hand against his forehead, but by the time he cracks the crust on his eyelids and pries them open he’s alone again.

———————————–

Jim Kirk has only just gotten on a shuttle to start his new life when a drunken man, all stubble and guilty anger rattling in his chest, gets ordered into the seat beside him.

“I may throw up on you,” he rumbles, his voice like a shuttle engine. He smells of bourbon and vomit, his eyes ringed with the brown-yellow of dying grain, wrapped around the color of gangrene and fresh earth. 

“I think these things are pretty safe.”

It’s ironic, even if they’re the only two that know it. Nobody could know the risks better than the man beside him


End file.
